


The Sound of You

by melo



Series: Temptation [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Blindness, Gen, Injury, Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melo/pseuds/melo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Temporarily blinded by a flash bomb, Dean waits for help.</p><p>Set in the Temptation universe where Angels came to Earth to harvest humanity for their bodies. This is their first meeting, years before the events of <i>Temptation Was Never Red</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of You

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of it's characters.
> 
> This can stand alone, but I suggest you read _Temptation Was Never Red_ first.

It’s fucking dark.

And cold.

And his bandages are fucking itchy.

Dean is never using flash bombs again. Or at least, he’s never using them without wearing a full welding mask. He might even avoid flares in the future.

His fingers creep slowly up the side of his face, scratching at the edge of his hastily done wrappings.

 _Dean, You’ll damage your eyes permanently._

 _Don’t take them off, you hear me, Dean? Dean!_

Even in his head, Sam’s voice is annoying and he can see his little brother’s disapproving pout on the back of his eyelids.

It’s night, but he knows better than to undo the wrap. It’s not like he’s bleeding out his eyes nor are there gaping wounds on his face, but he knows he should listen to his brother. He’d be fucked if daylight hit and he wasn’t wearing them. Maybe even starlight is enough to blind him – Dean’s not interested in checking.

All he can do is wait. Sit quietly in the dark and wait.

He’s not even sure where he is. A city, probably, if the buckled pavement he’d felt under his boots can tell him anything. The rush of wind and the echoing of sound also seem to suggest artificial canyons and the channels of abandoned streets.

He’s huddled in what might have once been an alley, rubbing his arms to keep warm. There’s a lot of rubble and collapsed wall around him, so he’s not sure how much of it is left, but he’s tucked himself into a nest of chunked concrete.

Dean wishes he were a little more adept at dealing with this. If rocks would just stop appearing in his path he wouldn’t have fallen so many times and Sammy wouldn’t have had to leave him. Now he’s not even sure if he should try exploring his surroundings in case he gets lost – something he can’t do since Sam needs to be able to find him again.

He huffs out an annoyed sigh; Dean’s cold and tired and the dark is oppressing.

He’s also really bored.

Seeing as he can’t fix any of his other problems, Dean starts relieving his boredom by building towers of rubble with the pebbles littering the ground around him. The towers start out simple pillars, but Dean soon finds that the disadvantage of being blind and using uneven hunks of rock to build things is that they keep falling over – because they’re unstable or Dean hits them or both.

He soon reinvents his structures as pyramids, though Dean suspects that they just look like piles of crap that probably aren’t even conical let alone pyramidal. But that doesn’t stop him from building a metropolis.

He’s started on trying to make bridges when he hears the clatter of stone somewhere to his left.

Dean freezes, hand suspended in the air where he’d been about to place a keystone in his arch. His heart feels like it’s stopped and he’s not even breathing as he listens for sounds of unfriendly company. He’s never felt more helpless in his life and suddenly the dark isn’t just an irritation, it’s a death shroud.

He thinks that maybe, he hadn’t been bored at all, and was just trying to distract himself from the dark envelope he sits in.

Shit, he hopes it was just the wind jostling some unstable ruins.

But then he hears it again.

A rattle of pebbles tumbling down a slope and the shuffle-drag of footsteps.

He carefully sets his keystone off to the side and rolls himself into a smaller target, hand pulling his gun from the waist of his pants.

Dean feels like a coward, hiding in the corner like this but there’s nothing he can do. It’s not like he can aim and he won’t hit anything unless whatever’s out there is right in front of his face. So instead of his usual style of going in, guns blazing, Dean stays very quiet, unmoving and with any luck, hidden in shadow.

He remains that way until he hears the scrape of cloth over brick, sliding slowly until there’s the thump of something soft connecting with the asphalt.

Dean waits for something else to happen, but nothing does. There’s no one tackling him or grabbing him; no one binding his limbs or slipping needles into his skin. There are no other footsteps and there’s not even the sound of anyone’s breathing but Dean’s.

Curious, Dean leans towards where he last heard the noises, cocking his head as if it might help him hear better – but there’s still nothing.

Dean starts feeling his way down the wall, patting softly against brick and creeping as quietly as possible towards the left. He carefully steps over any obstacles he feels, always fully examining what’s in his path using his free hand before estimating how far he has to lift his leg to step. Fortunately for Dean, he has yet to encounter jagged metal spikes or broken glass.

He’s getting into the pattern of moving like this when his hand stumbles onto something warm and alive.

His first instinct is to leap backwards, but that wouldn’t be smart – not that approaching the mysterious noise had been smart – since he’d lose track of the brick wall he’s using to orient himself.

Instead, he reaches out again, cautiously, inching his hand out bit by bit until he comes into contact with something fuzzy – hair.

Dean reasons that, if this were a danger, by now he’d have had his arm removed or broken, so instead of withdrawing his hand, he tucks his gun away and kneels down to the form slumped against the wall. He continues tracing the outline of the person in front of him and while he couldn’t hear the sound of breathing earlier, from this close he can. Almost-not-there breaths that indicate life, but Dean needs to find out why there’s no reaction to his presence.

He feels a little like a pervert, and reminds himself that if this is a person – which it must be since Angel’s are tough bastards that don’t just fall unconscious – then he has to make sure that they’re okay.

He trails fingers through the soft strands of short hair, feels the straight bridge of a sharp nose and the stubble of a strong jaw. His hands slide further down, noting the triangles of a collared shirt and the lapels of some sort of coat before continuing across stooped shoulders and down to lean arms.

It’s when he gets to the arms that he realizes what the problem is.

The sleeves are rolled up and there’s a clumpy wetness coating the skin.

“Fuck,” Dean’s fingers brush gingerly against the edge of the wounds, trying to gauge the extent of the damage.

There are straight incisions up his forearms, and Dean can tell they’re intentional from the fact that the two cuts are of the same length and in mirrored positions. He can also feel the bumps of stitching – coarsely done – which contrasts oddly with the surgical cuts. It’s like someone measured twice and cut once, then gave a knitting needle to a three year old and told him to sew it up.

Dean doesn’t know what to make of it, especially not of the foreign shapes he can feel under the skin, but he doesn’t want to check too closely. That would require more probing which would only make the wounds sting like a bitch at best; infect them at worst.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean shakes the man by the shoulders, “I’ve got some bandages, so just hold on. I’ll – I’ll see if I can wrap them...”

He doesn’t know how much good it’ll do since the wounds are only trickling a little blood, but they have to be the reason the guy’s unconscious and there’s nothing else he can do. Dean doesn’t know how long the man’s been in this condition. He could’ve been wandering for hours, bleeding out.

“I can’t clean what I can’t see and I don’t have any antiseptic anyways, but this’ll have to do for now, okay?” Dean says, even though the guy can’t hear him.

Dean fumbles for the bandages in his pocket, unrolling them sloppily and wrapping them firmly around the other man’s arm, “My brother’s coming back with help, so just – hold on.”

He tries to be as neat as he can, but he’s never practiced bandaging people while blind, so the best he can do is wrap them without twisting the lengths into confusing knots. It takes a lot longer than it would with sight, but he eventually covers one arm, rips the strip and tucks the frayed end between the man’s skin and the wrappings before moving onto the other arm and giving it the same treatment.

Throughout the whole process, Dean talks nonsense, “Tough day at the office? That meeting must’ve been murder, huh?”

He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, and he’s not sure if it’s for himself or for the man, “Wow, you even have a tie. Nothing wrong with looking sharp while fightin’ the good fight.”

When he’s finally finished and tucked the bandage roll back into his pocket, Dean sits back against the wall next to the other man, “What a pair we make, huh? Two injured saps, sitting in the street–“ Dean stops himself there because the way he said it almost sounded like a children’s song.

He shakes his head, lips pursed, “Never mind.”

Without Dean’s voice, there’s nothing but the inhale-exhale that’s too faint to be good and Dean’s own staggered breathing – nervous like it’s his life on the line and not some random guy he can’t even see.

He listens for as long as he can – which isn’t that long – before trying to rouse the man, “Hey, guy...” Dean bumps a shoulder with the other man’s, “Buddy, you awake?”

No response.

“Hey,” a light slap on the arm.

Nothing.

Dean blows air into the other’s ear.

A jerk of surprise, the flap of a coat sleeve.

The guy’s definitely awake now.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Dean smiles in the man’s direction, “I uh – I tried to bandage you. But I didn’t have any antiseptic, and I’m kinda... blind right now.”

The scrape of shoes against pavement as legs are rearranged.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, drawing away from the stranger, “You don’t have to tell me what happened to you, but just in case you didn’t know – there’s some freaky shit under your skin. I don’t know what it is, but you should probably get it taken out, ‘cause last time I checked, arms aren’t supposed to have octagonal bumps.”

He waits for some sort of response. He’s looking for verbal, but Dean’s sure he could hear it if the man nodded.

He gets nothing.

Dean’s starting to feel insulted. It’s like guy thinks that, by not making any noise, Dean will forget that he’s not alone. As if Dean could just ignore a man that fainted on the street, stranger or not.

“Hey, say something, I know your face is still intact,” Dean waves his hands in the air in front of the other man – funny because he’s pretty sure the other guy isn’t blind.

“Hello,” Dean taps the guy’s shoulder repeatedly, figuring that annoyance is the way to go, “Hey. Hey– “

“What, are you mute or something?” Dean pauses, brows furrowing, “Oh shit, you’re mute aren’t you?”

Dean crawls away from the other man, arms flailing for the opposite wall of the alley and finding that the concrete is within easy reaching distance. He puts his back to it so he can talk to the guy properly, feeling like he’s better respecting social norms and that he’s not a caveman, “Look, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean to be an insensitive jerk but I’m an idiot so don’t lis–“

“I am capable of speech,” the voice is surprisingly deep and rough, far different from the scrawny, nerdy image Dean had been building.

It actually sounds a little painful, “Oh... Well, are you thirsty? You sound like you could use a drink, buddy.”

“I’m fine.”

Now that Dean thinks about it, if the guy’s speaking, that means he could’ve answered Dean before he made himself look like a jackass. He feels the petty urge to make a big deal about it, but he let’s it go. The guy was probably disoriented and Dean was just too impatient to notice.

Instead, Dean says, “Have some anyways. Who knows when your next chance will be,” Dean unclips his flask of water from his belt, thrusting it in the direction he heard the other’s voice. He keeps his arm out until he feels the man take it, then listens as the cap is unscrewed, water moistening lips and swallowed in sips.

“What’s your name?” Dean asks when the man hands his flask back, noting that the water level seems almost unchanged. Either the guy is really polite – crazy, when people are fighting each other for crumbs – or his voice is just naturally desert dry.

There’s a few beats of silence where Dean fears the guy might have decided to clam up again, but then, “My name is... Jimmy.”

Yeah, right.

Dean doesn’t know why the guy feels like he needs to lie, but Dean will let it go. Maybe he’s from a less than friendly faction – Dean thinks it’s ridiculous, but even in the face of an enemy from space; humanity isn’t exactly united in arms.

“I’m Dean. Dean Winchester,” he smiles, sticks his hand out for a handshake which is never returned.

Not even after three minutes. Dean can almost feel Jimmy staring at him like Dean’s a freak who can’t control his body, when clearly it’s Jimmy who’s the freak.

He drops his hand, feeling silly, “That was a handshake, moron.”

And then a horrifying thought occurs to Dean, “You’re still alive, right? Awake?”

Dean lurches forward, hands slapping at the other man’s chest, fingers scrambling up the smooth cotton of a button up shirt and fumbling past the knot of a tie. He practically stabs Jimmy in the neck with his fingers, searching for a pulse – which he finds – beating strong and steady under warm skin.

“Fuck! Answer a man who’s asking if you’re alive!” Dean snarls in Jimmy’s face, smacking the man’s chest with the hand that had just verified his continued existence.

Jimmy better be one-eyed or a stroke victim or something for not seeing Dean’s attempted handshake. Anything less and Dean will have to punch him for not responding. His nerves feel like they’ve short circuited and he’s pissed; frustrated with his blindness – however temporary – and his inability to even judge the condition of the people around him without molesting them.

“My – my apologies, I was... inattentive,” Jimmy says, sounding a little dazed.

It’s sincere enough, so Dean blows out an angry breath, “Yeah. Yeah, okay, just – pay attention. To everything,” Dean thumps his forehead onto Jimmy’s shoulder, feeling like an over reactive wuss.

“There’s freaking body-snatching aliens out here – you can’t just zone out, man,” he mumbles, trying to calm the fuck down.

And he does relax a little – until he realizes he’s straddling the guy’s lap, forehead resting on his shoulder and hand still pressed over Jimmy’s heart.

Then he pushes himself hastily away, almost tipping onto his back but catching himself with hands splayed on the pavement. He manages to crab-walk-shuffle off the guy in the clumsiest series of movements Dean’s ever executed.

Apparently, Dean can’t deal with the loss of anything, and he imagines he’d still be this terrible if it was his sense of smell that was burnt out instead of his sight.

When he’s finally returned to his spot across from Jimmy, Dean wedges his spine into the corner formed by the slabs of broken wall, preparing for the awkward atmosphere that’s bound to descend.

He waits, but the discomfort doesn’t come. Instead, there’s only the dark of Dean’s bandages and the quiet sounds of the cold night.

There’s the hush of sand stirred up by the breeze brushing over pavement and pock marked concrete. The scrape of metal twisting minutely with every gust, pipes whistling with the wind, and the even drip of water from the eaves of the ruins they sit in.

The city bears no sounds of life besides Dean’s breath and Jimmy’s even softer puffs.

Dean rubs his hands together, trying to banish the cold and smother his disturbing thoughts. So though Dean knows that Sammy isn’t far and that Jimmy is right there, he starts talking; needing more evidence than a few exhales of air every five seconds.

“How’d you end up here?”

Dean hears the rustle of cloth against asphalt as Jimmy sits straighter, “What do you mean?”

“In this city – fainting in the dirt.”

It’s like Jimmy’s got a time release system that only lets him speak after an appropriate, inappropriate pause, but eventually he says, “It is a... lesson.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, though Jimmy wouldn’t be able to tell with the bandages in the way, “Lesson?”

“Yes,” Jimmy seems to mull over his words, “My methods of operation were deemed... unsatisfactory.”

So Jimmy is from one of those more militaristic factions. Dean hopes he’s not a fanatic, although it’s hard to say what a fanatic is in these times.

More importantly, “Did they do that to you?” Dean gestures to his own forearms, feeling anger building in the back of his throat at the thought of someone cutting up their own allies.

“They... are not to blame.”

“Then they threw you out,” this isn’t much easier to accept, “–in the middle of nowhere for – what – using one gun instead of two?”

There might be a wry smile on Jimmy’s face, “You could say that.”

“Wow, what a dick move,” Dean scrunches his mouth in distaste, “Are they coming back for you? Because if they are, you should just tell them to stick their two guns where the sun don’t shine.”

“I don’t think that would be wise – nor feasible,” Dean’s sure there’s a smile of some sort on Jimmy’s face this time.

“Yeah, well fuck them,” Dean snorts, jaw jutting out, “Who just throws their guys out to the dogs like that, huh?”

Dean shakes his head, pointing his face down in the direction of his hand, fingers drawing circles in the dust by his thigh, “I mean, I don’t know you very well, but even if you sucked at your job, they could’ve just found something else for you to do, right?”

There’s only the sound of Jimmy’s breathing, and Dean can’t check his expression to see if it’s because he agrees with the injustice or if it’s because he honestly is a fuck up that’s feeling guilty for his failure.

“You know–,” Dean hesitates, not sure if he should be doing this but knowing a guy in need when he sees – hears – one, “If you’re not happy there you can come with me. Our group isn’t that big and we’re not well supplied, but we’d never do that – abandon you.”

He waits to see what Jimmy thinks, but doesn’t get more than a thoughtful silence so Dean continues, “And, really – we could use all the support we can. We’re hoping to set up a counsel or something. Maybe bring all the factions together to make one big Resistance,” Dean grins at the thought of a long table of grouchy elders – Bobby would fit right in, “It would be a lot stronger than a bunch of gangs shooting at the sky.”

Jimmy speaks up, voice low and cautious, “I appreciate your offer... but I cannot. They are my brothers.”

Dean leans forward like he might be going deaf now, too, “What? Your _brothers_ left you?”

“They may have left me here, but it was done for my sake – it is better that I learn while the danger is small rather than during true battle,” Jimmy sounds defensive, but the words also sound like a mantra he’s heard or been repeating for weeks.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Dean throws his hands in the air, “How the fuck is the danger small right now? You could be snatched up at any time – hell, a _wall_ could fall on you and then what?”

“A wall could fall on me while I’m with them,” the other man says irritably.

“Yeah – but then they’d be with you.”

Jimmy doesn’t say anything to that.

They sit across from each other, only a few feet of space between the cracked slabs Dean leans against and the brick rubble that supports Jimmy, but it’s cold and the wind that blows down the alley only underlines the tight silence that’s fallen between them.

Dean pulls his legs up to his chest, tucking his hands against his stomach and trying to keep his body heat centered. He doesn’t know how far away the morning is, but like hell he’s going to die of exposure.

“They are my family.”

Dean looks up – or, well, lifts his head to face the source of Jimmy’s voice – and wishes that he didn’t need the bandages. The other man’s tone hardly gives away his thoughts and Dean wonders if maybe his eyes might reveal more.

“Yeah, I get that,” Dean clears his throat, not knowing why those words came out as whispers, “I have a brother – Sam. We – we look out for each other. Right now, he’s getting help for me and he’ll probably be back by morning. So I... I get how it is...“

Sam’s dimpled smile and gangly awkwardness, Bobby’s gruff advice and ever present cap, Ellen giving him a dressing down and Jo dragging him into her mother-daughter disputes.

It’s been weeks since he’s been home.

Dean swallows, chest aching, “But family’s more than blood you know?”

The silence this time is longer, like Jimmy’s trying to puzzle out the meaning of Dean’s words or translate the expression into something he can relate to. And then he can feel Jimmy’s considering stare fall on him, as if he knows what Dean’s seeing behind his bandages.

“If your Sam did things you disagreed with – acted with or without your best interests in mind – would you leave him?”

Dean feels like his response should be instantaneous, but the importance of the question is tangible – his one voice to speak for them both – and he needs to look carefully even though he knows that it’s written on his being.

“... No,” maybe he’d walk away for a while, but Dean knows that always, “... I wouldn’t.”

He hears the hush of cloth against skin, a nod to their common ground, “Family may be more than blood, but the blood is still there.”

And this time it’s Dean who’s left without words.

  


* * *

  
 

Dean wakes with a jerk of his head, skull knocking against the wall behind him. It stings, but he stiffens and doesn’t make a sound.

It’s unnaturally dark and quiet and for a moment, Dean doesn’t know where he is and he reaches for the gun at his waist. But then a breeze passes over his face, chill against his cheeks but not the skin near his eyes and he reaches up with stiff fingers, touches the rough bandage work and remembers what happened.

He calls out, sounding small and insubstantial in the suffocating black, “Hey... Jimmy?”

“Yes, Dean?” Jimmy replies, the origin of his voice indicating he’s sitting in the same place as earlier.

Dean feels the tension run out of his body, shoulders slumping and hand falling away from his weapon, “Oh. Okay, no – I was just checking if you were still there.”

“I’m here.”

Dean nods, not sure if it’s possible to roll his eyes when they’re closed, “Yeah.”

He doesn’t really mind though, because somehow the shadows seem to retreat, thinning and becoming peaceful. There’s no light slipping through the wrappings over his face and it’s still quiet, but the sound of almost-not-there puffs that are distinctly Jimmy’s make the blindness easier to bear.

“I received word that I am welcome to return to my brothers,” Jimmy tells him.

“Oh,” Dean didn’t know that Jimmy had a functioning communications device with him, but it makes sense since his brothers had left him with the intention of getting him back eventually. They must have contacted Jimmy when Dean had nodded off.

“So... why aren’t you back with them already? I can’t see it, but I’m pretty sure we’re in the burnt out husk of a city and this isn’t exactly a vacation spot."

Jimmy says, like his reason is obvious, “Your brother has not yet returned.”

Dean frowns, because yeah, Sam hasn’t but that shouldn’t affect Jimmy, “He’ll be back soon. The sun’s almost up right? So you should get going.”

“Yes.”

Dean listens closely but doesn’t hear the brush of cloth or scrape of shoe he would hear if someone was getting off the floor. He doesn’t hear the tread of soles crunching sand against pavement that he would hear if someone was walking away. All he hears is the continued breath-that’s-almost-not.

“... Aren’t you going to go?” Dean asks, voice hushed like speaking louder might tip Jimmy into motion.

But Jimmy stays where he is, “They can wait.”

Dean brings his knees closer, arms folded over top of them. He burrows his face blindly into the crease of his arm, murmurs timidly, not sure if he wants Jimmy to hear him or not, “...Thanks.”

There’s nothing but the light whistle of wind, but Dean doesn’t feel it. He’s strangely warm like a blanket’s been draped over him and he wonders if that’s a good thing. He was pretty cold earlier and he’s heard that right before death, people suffering from hypothermia feel warm.

For all he knows, none of this is real and he’s still asleep. Jimmy could be a figment of his imagination or trying to wake Dean from unconsciousness right now.

But Dean’s tired, and the heat sinks comfortingly into his shoulders; the dark remains gentle, docile, the night surely slipping away. So Dean just listens to the quiet puff of air across from him; the steady breath that matches pace with the heart he’d felt under his palm.

He breathes and waits to see the dawn.


End file.
